1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to systems and methods for substantially optimizing plant operations within a manufacturing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Manufacturing facilities, in particular highly process intensive manufacturing environments, employ computer based instrumentation systems that control facility operations. Such systems typically use a steady-state, fundamental-principles control model that represents the entire facility. Accordingly, parameterization or calibration of the control model to the facility's operating conditions can only be performed when the entire facility is at a steady state.
A primary goal of typical manufacturing facility operations is to operate at or near the optimal conditions for as much of the operating time as possible. The fundamental-principles control model is the primary tool used in the optimization effort. Optimization is typically performed by iterating or re-iterating the fundamental-principles control model when process conditions change within the individual units of the facility, or when business conditions (e.g. prices, supply of raw materials, demand of intermediate/finished products) change outside of the facility, to find the optimal or substantially optimal operating conditions. Optimization can be time consuming due to the computationally intensive, large-scale, non-linear program that must be solved each time the control model is iterated. The solution of non-linear program based control model can also be difficult to understand because of the large number of unknown variables and equations within the model compared to the limited number of variables that are actually measured in the facility. Thus, trouble shooting the control model when it fails to converge can be very time consuming if not futile.
There is a need, therefore, to simplify the parameterization and optimization of a control model to reduce operating costs associated with controlling manufacturing facility processes.